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The Future of Wine: No Corks, No Vintages, and Maybe No Grapes
Winemakers are working on unusual solutions to the problem of climate change
Recently, wine critic, author, master sommelier, and, by extension, highly opinionated wine drinker Evan Goldstein was preparing to have guests over for dinner when he had a thought. “Hey Alexa,” he ventured. “What’s your favorite cabernet?” He didn’t need the advice, of course. But he couldn’t help but wonder just how soon it would be until a robot put him out of work.
The answer: Maybe sooner than he thought. “The cynical Evan Goldstein expected her to answer with whatever mass brand had bought its way to the top of her search function,” he says. But her choice of Chateau Ste. Michelle was nothing to scoff at. When he challenged her to come up with something more esoteric — her favorite German riesling — she had what he thought was a fairly astute answer for that, too. That’s when he began to sweat.
Purists, of course, will always root for the rarefaction of wine. It’s an art form so complex that even the professionals will never fully understand it — which is part of the fun. “I hate it when people say, I want to demystify wine,” says Karen MacNeil, the James Beard-award winning author of The Wine Bible. “Like, really? That would be the worst possible thing.” But even wine can’t stave off technology forever — nor can it afford to.
For one thing: The planet’s a mess. Climate change has forced the wine industry to evolve more in the last 20 years than the 500 before it, says MacNeil. In 2017, wildfires destroyed nearly 250,000 acres of land across Napa; all over France, extreme freezes are the new normal. Will Helburn, the longtime manager of Rosenthal Wine Merchant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, says it is now common for Burgundy — one of the most storied regions for winemaking, producing some of the best, and priciest, vintages in the world — to lose a significant percentage of its crops; according to a 2016 Wine Spectator report, as much as 90 to 100 percent, in some cases. By 2069, the area will likely be too warm to produce what we now think of as a Burgundy at all. (“Perhaps more like a California pinot,” says Helburn.)
